


Hollow

by curligurl0896



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Contemplation of Suicide, Gen, Mentions of Character Death, PTSD, Post book 54, allusions to rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28808355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curligurl0896/pseuds/curligurl0896
Summary: "That’s what it feels like for him. Like his insides had been scooped out, destroyed—like the very core of him had been dissolved as if by acid. Like it was nothing short of a miracle that there was enough of him to pilot the shell that was his body."Takes place after the canon ending of the series. Trigger warnings for ptsd, allusions/allegory to rape, mentions of character death, mentions of suicide, etc.
Kudos: 7





	Hollow

It takes him quite  some time to come back to himself.

Slowly but surely ,  he  becomes aware of himself again,  aware of his surroundings. Aware of the room he’s in,  spacious and warm and full of  light—but still a poor substitute to fresh air and open sky above him.  Aware of the people who came to see him, to care for  him,  their bodies vastly different from his own  yet with faces that were quite familiar to him.  He begins to remember them, remember who they  were to him—and, more importantly, he begins to  remember himself.  The details of  his life c o me  back to him quite easily , once he really starts to think about it, as if it had all been  within reach and he had not been aware of it until just now.

He still doesn’t remember what happened to him , though —not consciously , anyway.  There’s a fuzzy  blackness , a gap in his memory where the violation of his very existence must have taken place. He doesn’t remember being  violated,  doesn’t remember being  rescued  from that violation, and wasn’t even aware that such  a thing even took place until  he had  asked  Marco  about it one morning.

Marco's head had jerked back in surprise, he remembers  _ that _ vividly enough.  At first he thinks it  must be due to the admission of his missing memory, but as it turned out , it had been more due to hearing him say anything at all, as  he’d apparently been in a comatose state for the past couple months ,  able to function somewhat on a physical level  but otherwise completely unresponsive to the world around him .  _ Like a furry  _ _ blue vegetable, _ Marco had said , as blunt as always .  _ We were starting to think you  _ _ were brain dead. _ __

Apparently it was the first time Ax had spoken since then.

He almost wishes he  had stayed silent.  T he truth  is almost too horrifying  to wrap his head  around —and yet the reality of it  threatens to invade his mind and drag him down under once again. His body taken over,  used,  _ assimilated _ —controlled by a being  far worse than a  Yeerk .  His people,  at war  once again because of him. 

His former  prince,  killed in the attempt to save him.

It was only thanks to the  Ellimist that his body is his own once again, Tobias tells him about a week later. Tobias visits no less than twice per day, and promises that he would be spending much more time with his  _ shorm _ if not for the fact that he still needs to hunt for his food. He is glad that Ax is speaking again, even if Ax hardly speaks at all, even if he’s still just a hollowed-out version of his former self.

Hollow.  That’s what it feels like for him.  Like  his  insides had  been  scooped out, destroyed— like the very core of him had been dissolved as if by acid. Like it was nothing short of a miracle that there was  enough of him to pilot the shell that was his body. 

Cassie also visits him regularly. Less so than before, of course, but that’s mostly only because he’s conscious enough now to not need assistance in fulfilling his most basic needs. Still, she checks up on him quite often, saying it’s the least she could do after staying home while the others went off to try and rescue him from his horrid fate. 

_ Of course, _ she breathes when he admits he doesn’t exactly remember what happened, her eyes filling with tears on his behalf.  _ Of _ course _ you don’t remember. What you went through... it must have been so horrible.  _ According to her, the human mind had a tendency to subconsciously block out particularly traumatizing memories in order to protect itself—she thought it likely that his own  Andalite mind had done the same.

But even if that was the case, it wasn’t very long before his subconscious decided to remind him of what the rest of him had apparently tried so hard to forget.

Nightmares. That’s how the memories first manifest themselves. Nightmares of an abomination, like something only born out of a truly twisted imagination, reaching out, touching him,  _ consuming  _ him. Of the excruciating sense of perversion and wrongness that came from his body being invaded and his mind being gradually subdued, every last nerve of him left with the constant feeling of defilement on a level that he had never thought possible. Of the agony of living helpless and trapped deep inside himself, struggling to endure as he felt his mind, his sanity, his very sense of _ self  _ being slowly eaten away at by the corrosive presence of The One.

He deserved it, a nasty, self-loathing part of him thinks, for going in so foolishly, for getting his team brutally and needlessly murdered. It is a ludicrous thought— _ no one  _ deserved to go through what he had, not even the monster that murdered his brother—but the thought comes to his mind nonetheless. After all, it  _ was _ because of him that his team had been slaughtered. It was because of him that  _ Jake  _ had been slaughtered. It was because of him that his own kind were forced to wage war against the  _ Kelbrid _ __ not long after peace was achieved for the first time in decades.

And yet here he was, unable to do anything but feel a distant sense of shame at what he’d become: a broken, pitiful thing, the kind of creature his people would look down upon with horror and contempt, stripped of all the pride and dignity he once had as an Andalite.

Pride? What pride? He had none, not anymore, not after The One had so thoroughly destroyed it. He didn’t think even the most hubristic of creatures could still have a sense of pride after spending so long being crushed under the weight of a being far more powerful than themselves like a bug  underhoof .

All he has left to live for now is duty—his duty that he’d received the day he’d agreed to become a warrior, promising to give his very life in service to his people. He knows he should be out there, fighting, if only to atone for his mistakes—but the declaration of his intentions to do just that only bring forth protests from his human friends. Cassie pleads with him, Marco gets angry with him, and Tobias just stares at him silently for a while, his emotions somehow radiating from a body that was otherwise incapable of expressing them.

_ We just got you back, man,  _ he finally says after a while.  _ Don’t throw that all away. Especially not for them. _

He listens to them, if only for now. After all, he is clearly not yet even capable of being just Ax, let alone the heroic Prince Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.

He is hollow and haunted, a far cry from the proud  Andalite warrior he’d once been.

He could not bring himself to enjoy the things he had come to love on Earth—human television now seemed vapid and meaningless in the wake of his suffering, and experiencing the pleasure of human taste was out of the question when the mere idea of morphing a mouth felt far too close to the horror of his own face being torn open.

And all the while he could not stop himself reliving the  horrors he’d experienced every night. Could not stop feeling the sense of The One’s corruption eating him from the inside out. Could not erase from his mind the image of Jake’s human blood spilling out onto the floor of the Blade Ship after he’d been slain by the same  Yeerk who’d slain his cousin a few years ago—which, horrifyingly enough, was still a far better fate than what The One had planned for him.

It would be so easy, a part of him thinks, to just end it all. It’s not as if the others could stop him—his tail was far too fast for that.

The mere idea of it is cowardly and shameful, a clear sign of just how low he’d been brought. Yet it isn’t what stops him.

No, what keeps him from taking his own life is much simpler than that. In fact, it was something he didn’t even realize was there at first—in fact it was surprising that there was even anything left of himself anymore. It is nothing but a tiny, dwindling flame against the  ever-present darkness of his sorrow, but it is still  _ something. _

Instinct. It is mere instinct that drives him to keep going.

But at the end of the day, it is all he has.

So he clings to it desperately, choosing to believe, even if somewhat irrationally, that despite everything he’d suffered through, everything he’d caused, things would, in the end, somehow turn out okay.

**Author's Note:**

> So, funny story, I've always considered Ax to be my favorite Animorph, and I couldn't bear what happened to him at the end of the series, especially the thought that he was effectively dead at that point-- but then I proceed to write a fic where him actually surviving The One leaves him so absolutely traumatized by the whole experience that he might actually have been better off if it simply killed him. Like wtf is wrong with me.
> 
> Anyway, any and all feedback is appreciated, especially because I'm still not a hundred percent confident about how this turned out-- but honestly I felt like if I didn't post it now, it'll never get to see the light of day.


End file.
